Quote:
Originally posted by robustpuppy
I have never been a fan but only started hating him with Cocktail, which is so cringingly embarrasingly bad I can hardly believe it didn't kill his career. I thought he was well-cast in Jerry Maguire, because he was supposed to be a bit of prick in that movie, but I didn't really buy that he was redeemed by some hard knocks, true love, and the success he gained by looking out for someone else who was going to look after himself regardless of what Jerry did. (Does that make sense?) In other words, his puppy dog schtick at the end didn't fool me. I also didn't think that was such a fantabulous movie. Mission Impossible was a piece of shit, and if I were Tom Cruise and possessed of a normal ego I would feel like the Bourne Identity was the movie MI should have been. Minority Report was okay and it made good use of the nearly-manic intensity in his gaze, which was also put to good use in the Firm. He wasn't bad in A Few Good Men, I'll give him that, but he was playing against Demi Moore a lot of the time, so there you go. I can't even comment on Top Gun.
Bottom line is that I don't understand his monstrous success. His is not a face or a voice or a personality that I can't get enough of on screen.
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You're starting to scare me, except for the fact that I've seen neither MI or Minority Report. But I think the thing about Cruise is that the very things that make him a "safe/non-offensive" choice in many movies, are also the things that make him so uninteresting. For example, I thought Risky Business was a great movie, but you could have gotten any young actor of that era to play that role, and most would have been better. For every good movie he's been in, he's done three which suck, and the vast majority of the good movies he's done would have been better with somebody else in them. Great actors can make questionable material good and good material great. He does neither. I just find him totally undeserving of the success and adulation he's received.
In the simplest terms I can put it, he's Tom Hanks without the talent.
